About Jacob Obrecht

Jacob Obrecht was a leading Flemish composer in the late 15th century who held important church music positions in Cambrai, Bruges and Antwerp.
In 1487 he spent a short time in Ferrara, Italy, in the service of the duke Ercole I d’Este.
He returned to Ferrara in 1504 and died there a year later from the plague.

Obrecht wrote some thirty settings of the ordinary of the Mass, using various contemporary forms.
In common with many other composers of the time he wrote a setting using the well known popular song L'homme armé.
A similar number of motets include a number of Marian antiphons.
Relatively little of Obrecht's secular vocal music has survived.